


hand in unlovable hand

by panickedbee



Series: The Wolf That Cannot Eat the Lamb [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Curtain Fic, Dark Will Graham, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder Husbands, On the Run, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03, Slow Burn, Will is working through some stuff, living in a lovely beach house where no one can find them, or rather
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panickedbee/pseuds/panickedbee
Summary: After the fall, Will finds himself in a beautiful house near the beach somewhere in Cuba, living and healing with Hannibal Lecter. But since dancing around Hannibal and his feelings for him is all Will knows, this is exactly what he does. Until he doesn’t.(To no one’s surprise, his coping mechanism is adopting some dogs.)
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: The Wolf That Cannot Eat the Lamb [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049489
Comments: 46
Kudos: 182





	1. i: ivy

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set a few weeks after the first work of this series, which is a sort of prologue to this.

The clouds are hanging in the sky like black ripe fruit. It would rain soon. Will Graham rummages around in the pocket of his jacket with one hand, holding a large bag full of groceries in the other. Finding the keys to the front door, he lets himself in and another set of feet enters behind him before he closes the door. Will looks around for a moment, but he has already heard noises from the kitchen. Hannibal doesn’t look up from his chopping board as he greets him.

“Good morning, Will. Thank you for shopping.” Then, as he smells an unfamiliar scent, “I see you had some company.”

A small black dog is following at Will’s heel on three legs.

“This is Ivy. She’s not more than six months.”

Hannibal is taking a closer look at the black, slightly muddy fur and the missing limb where the dog’s right front leg would be. “Ivy has the incredible ability to always keep growing back, and to flourish where one least expects it.” He looks back at his board. “You are beginning to collect strays again.”

Will places the grocery bag on the kitchen island and opens the fridge. Before he begins to stock it, he takes out something wrapped in plastic foil and puts it on a plate.

“It’s not above you to collect strays either, doctor.” He looks at Hannibal who is slicing perfectly thin strips of bacon that fall onto each other. His posture doesn’t betray his wounds. “You’re not supposed to be moving so much yet.”

Will should have known he cannot keep him out of the kitchen for long. Ivy wags her tail enthusiastically as she waits for Will to place the plate on the tiles. _Liver_.

A quick smile washes over Hannibal’s face. “And this was supposed to be our dinner.” His tone is more bemused than it is annoyed.

As Will is filling the fridge, he’s talking to the back of Hannibal’s head. “Oh, we can survive a night without meat, don’t you think?”

A moment passes as they go about their tasks in silence. Will sorting the fridge, Hannibal preparing the food. Ivy devouring their dinner. If one didn't know better, that silence could almost be called domestic. Then, as always, Hannibal breaks it.

“Do you consider yourself just another stray to me, Will?”

Will closes the fridge but doesn’t turn around. “I consider myself ... alone without you.” His tone is bitter, and he wants to add a silent _You made sure of that_. But then he doesn’t. Because it isn’t true. Will made his own choices, and he is tired placing blame. _You can’t reduce me to a set of influences_.

“Then that does not make you a stray.”

“What does it make me?”

Hannibal pauses, his knife frozen in motion. “An equal.”

_We are both alone without each other._

The pan sizzles and the kitchen begins to smell like bacon and eggs. The water in the bathtub changes from brown to a clear stream. As Ivy shakes the water out of her fur and all over the bathroom, her nose lifts to the smell. Breakfast is ready.

*

He presses the white bandage to tanned skin. Holding it in place he rolls it along soft flesh, muscles and ribs, all the way across his back and around again. This is not the first time Will has taken to changing Hannibal’s bandages. It’s not the first time he sees him, half-naked and vulnerable before him, but touch is always behind a layer of fabric. Hidden. Will is hiding. He can never meet his eyes in those moments.

Only as Will turns to leave does Hannibal begin to speak.

“Was she born with it or did she lose it later?”

Will sits down next to him on the edge of the bed and watches Ivy sleeping soundly in the corner of the bedroom. She already follows him around the house wherever he goes. Will thinks she might need another friend.

“She seems to still be adjusting and stumbling around sometimes. I think she lost it in an accident in recent months.”

“Relearning how to walk,” Hannibal muses. “It isn’t easy to lose a limb. But one can learn to live without it.”

Will keeps his eyes on the dog. In the very quiet pauses between them he can hear her little snores.

When Hannibal continues, he’s looking at Will. “Throughout our lives we all leave something behind we cannot hold onto anymore.”

Will slowly shifts his head to study Hannibal’s expression. He’s not surprised to find him looking at him, but he is surprised by the raw emotion on his face. He may just be becoming better at reading him, or Hannibal is allowing him more glimpses of him. Either way, what Will is most surprised by is how much his own heart aches to see him sad.

“You think that something is you,” Will whispers.

“Jack Crawford lost his Bella. We lost our Abigail. A lost limb, yet we’re still standing.”

“You think I’m still going to cut you off and move on with a part missing.”

The realisation hits Will harder than he expected. Yes, he has certainly cut some ties in his life, left behind blood and tears and ruin. But it didn’t feel like losing a limb. It felt like stepping into a body that was made for him. Using parts of himself he never knew existed. Still, he walked away from those parts more than once. Hannibal cannot be sure Will wouldn’t do so again. Could Will be sure?

“What do you think, Will?” Hannibal asks, almost carefully.

Will stands up and turns his back to him. Ivy blinks her eyes open at the sound of his footsteps.

“I think I’ve been adjusting... stumbling in the dark... regrowing something else in myself.” He looks over his shoulder but avoids Hannibal’s eyes. “And now I’m relearning how to walk.”

As he is leaving the room, Ivy follows at his heel gracefully.

*

Will didn’t plan it. It was rather something that ... happened somehow. He was on one of his walks with Ivy, taking a wider route that day. Will could swear she grew bigger by the day, and with it more restless. He took her to the beach and Ivy played in the water, running towards the water and away from it as the waves came in. They played this game of catch a few times, Ivy and the sea, one time with her emerging utterly soaked. Will couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed so hard.

They were finishing their round and were on their way back to the house when Ivy suddenly started barking furiously. Will turned to where she was barking at, his grip tight around her leash. A row of large ferns in a dark corner. His whole body tensed to stillness, holding his breath. A rustling noise. Something was moving in the ferns, watching them, waiting. Instinctively, his free hand was already edging at the holster that was holding his gun. A habit that died hard, both having a gun and edging for it.

Another rustle.

Will blinked and saw the first sharp end of black antlers emerging from the bushes, slowly rising up, dripping with thick liquid darkness. He blinked again, and from one moment to the next something jumped out to charge at them. The gun was in his hand and pointing sharply before his mind caught up and he heard a shriek cry, not knowing for a second if he had pulled the trigger or not. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, the red veil slowly lifting before his eyes, and tilted his head at the creature.

A dog.

At the whip of his gun it had fallen to the ground in submission. _A sign of abuse_. He took a step back as Ivy barked and the big dog growled and barked back. It was a fully grown Golden Retriever with a bloody left eye. Will saw that he was underweight.

When they came back almost two hours later than expected, Hannibal didn’t even ask any questions. Dinner was still warm and a new bowl was added next to Ivy’s.

*

A few days have passed since Will brought the new dog home. He decides to name him Fern. They found out that Fern doesn’t like Hannibal very much, or rather that he scares him. Will thinks, somewhat bitterly, that something about him must remind him of his former owner. Being scared of Hannibal feels strangely relatable to him, and at first he thinks it serves Hannibal right to be feared by another living thing, now that Will can’t fear him anymore.

There are even days on which he thinks Hannibal himself had forgotten the beast that lives inside of him, misplaced it somehow and substituted it with domesticity. So it is an unexpected reminder that comes with the wince and pinched tale of the Golden Retriever at the sight of Hannibal with a knife in his hand. Some sort of dull throb that reminds one of a long forgotten toothache. It has not ached in a while but the tooth is still rotten. My domesticated monster, Will thinks, for some reason smiling to himself. Fern is not permitted in the kitchen during cooking times anymore.

He is also surprised to see Hannibal seeming a little hurt by the rejection of their newest household member. Will tells him it’s too bad he’s the problem, otherwise he could have branched out in his field and finally tried a hand on therapy for dogs. Hannibal pretends not to be amused by this, but Will can see the little tuck of his mouth anyway.

After a week, Will finds out Fern’s former name. Ivy and him have adjusted to each other fairly quickly, even playing a little with each other on the beach. After the last time, he always keeps in mind the time during their walks, since Hannibal admitted to him that he had worried, and Will himself was surprised by how touching he found that thought. A highly wanted serial killer worrying about Will Graham and his two dogs when they're late for dinner. Someone else might have called it sweet. Yet there is still a part of him that wants him to worry. That wants Hannibal to feel pain, to feel afraid that Will would not come back the next time. But he knows the part that wants to hurt him is dying down by the day. And maybe this is the real danger.

Walking the dogs back, Will sees a missing poster on the wall of a broken house. It's a photo of his new dog with a phone number attached. _Diablo_ , it reads. Luckily, Will knows the real devil intimately enough to know this sweet golden dog is not it. He types the number into his phone and dials.

*

“What’s for dinner?” Will asks when he comes home.

Hannibal is already in the kitchen and he joins him. He seems delighted that Will asked. “I was thinking of a traditional Cuban dish with my own twist.”

“I’m assuming there will be enough for three,” he says, knowing Hannibal’s portions and desire to showcase.

That lets Hannibal freeze for a second, the smile fading from his face. “Are we expecting a dinner guest?”

“We are.”

Will picks up another cutting board and knife and wordlessly slips next to him at the kitchen island. He has never done that before, helped him in the kitchen. Their tasks in the household have been strictly separated without them ever talking about it. Hannibal hesitates, only watching him cut one of his tomatoes in half. Will catches his eye and smiles a smile Hannibal can’t help but mirror.

“So who are we inviting tonight?”

“I found Fern’s former owner.”

Hannibal contemplates that for a moment. “A guest of honour, then.”

As Will slices another tomato the juice is spilling from the deep red fruit onto the wooden board.

“Indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this series is my first ever Hannibal fic, sooo yeah. Just as a side note. I'm not sure what I'm doing, still warming up to writing them, but it feels really good to be writing and posting again. Haven't done that here in a while!


	2. ii: fern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you hurt a dog, what do you expect Will Graham to do?

Will told Hannibal to keep it simple with the decor. Which for Hannibal still meant getting out their third best table runner, deeply red with golden embroideries, of course fitting the colour scheme of not one but three big vases filled to the brink with roses he cut from their garden.

“Will you do me a favour?” Will asks, taking a quick look at his watch. It’s time.

“Of course, Will.” Hannibal is wearing a cream brown suit, white shirt, no tie, looking stunning as always. He doesn’t wear full-on suits often anymore, it’s far too hot outside, but Will must admit he enjoys seeing a glimpse of the past in him. How they began. Hannibal, the charming therapist in his tailored suits.

“Whatever happens ... don’t intervene.”

Hannibal seems to hesitate. But the ringing doorbell leaves no time for questions. “As you wish.”

Despite Will having put on his best white shirt, the man awaiting him on the other side of the door does not look happy to see him.

“Where’s my dog?” The man in the doorframe is strongly-built and speaks in a thick Spanish accent.

Will gives him a thin smile and opens the door wider. “Please, come in.”

Their guest looks around the living room and sees the fully set dinner table - but no dog. Of course not. They’re upstairs.

“What is this?”

“My...” Will glances back at Hannibal who is standing by the table and smiling his polite smile. He would do what Will tells him. There’s a quiet sense of power in that knowledge that sends sparks over his skin. “... _husband_ and I would love to have you for dinner.“

Hesitantly, the man takes a few steps forward. He gives the slightest flinch when Will puts a hand on his shoulder to lead him to the seat Hannibal is already pulling out for him.

“What would you like to drink, Señor Perez?” Hannibal asks, always the perfect host.

“I-“

“Bring the red vintage,” Will answers for him, then gives Señor Perez a smile.

He clearly has no idea what is happening to him but stays seated, lets Hannibal fill his glass and takes a big gulp, all the while not seeming to get rid of that look of confusion on his face. Will does not talk, only sips his wine and keeps smiling at him. Once again, he scans the room for a sign of what he came here for, even turns around on his chair to do something.

“Listen, tío, thanks for the invitation but I am here to get my-“

Hannibal enters from the kitchen, elegantly balancing three plates and interrupting his protests.

“Ropa Vieja in a red sauce, served with yellow rice and black beans.”

It smells delicious. The shredded beef is piled onto each other in a colourful mix of bell peppers and olives. A typically Cuban dish indeed. There is always symbolism with Hannibal, of course. And of course, as any good host, Hannibal is the last one to serve himself and would usually be the first one to open the conversation within the so far quite tense atmosphere at the dinner table. But Will doesn’t want him to, not this time.

“So, Señor Perez, what do you do for a living?” Will asks.

Perez already started eating. Apparently hunger has won over scepticism. How inelegant.

“I-“ he gulped down a big chunk before he continues, “I am farmer. But this year the harvest is a pain. Too hot. Wish I could get a meal this good in my house.”

He downs his glass of wine and keeps eating like he was going to miss an appointment. It isn’t a pleasant sight, especially not on their dinner table, but when Will throws Hannibal a glance, he is surprised to find him ... bemused. After all, he has killed people for less despicable behaviour. Then he remembers where he has seen this look before. When they had been delivered to Mason Verger’s dining room and he and his assistant went on about all the ways in which they would make a meal out of Hannibal, he looked just as delighted. As if he knew something they didn’t. Always a spectator, leaning back to enjoy the show.

Here, of course, the show is Will. He would play the part Will assigned him because he is curious what he will do. Hannibal’s singular attention and fascination for him is far from unknown to him, surely. But now that he wants it, he feels almost overwhelmed by the need to please him.

Señor Perez keeps eating audibly. If Hannibal is irritated by that, he isn’t showing it.

“Is good. Very good beef. Must be expensive, no?”

Hannibal answers smoothly, “Quality always comes with a price, and I am very selective about what I put in my body. Isn’t that so, Will?” He shoots Will a glance that seems obscene in this context, and Will clears his throat before he swallows the wrong way. Hannibal is enjoying this a little too much, he can tell. Never a very good sign.

“Perhaps we could visit your farm someday. We are very supportive of local products,” he adds, and as another fork of meat reaches his mouth, Will can’t help but watch. It’s been such a long time since he has seen Hannibal in this environment. Dinner with a guest, the charm, the subtle amusement about his own cannibalistic implications no one else picks up on. He looks more alive here than he had in weeks, alone with Will.

Señor Perez only grunts, which might be in agreement, but it’s hard to tell when his mouth is full of food. Hannibal is very good at hiding his disgust but Will is becoming impatient.

“Eating at this pace is not good for your stomach, Señor,” he tells him dryly.

Perez grunts again, this time a laugh.

“Look,” he swallows and continues, “I know this game, tío. If I eat the food, I get my dog, sí? You American people that come here and think they can make the rules, they can manipulate, get what they want. I will play the game, but I will leave with my dog.”

“Of course you will.” Hannibal smiles at him, but the rest of the meal is spent in silence.

As soon as Perez has emptied his plate he puts down his knife and fork and shoves the chair back to stand, impatience radiating from him.

Hannibal stands with him in an instance, still smiling, and is suddenly next to him to put a hand on his shoulder, motioning him to sit down again. “Please, we must insist you stay for dessert.”

The man keeps standing, looking Hannibal in the eyes as if to challenge him to look away first. He doesn’t. “Fine,” he says finally, sitting back down with crossed arms.

“I promise it will be worth it.” And with that Hannibal disappears into the kitchen.

Señor Perez is looking after him, shaking his head. “What strange people you are,” he mumbles, but is surprised to find Will not sitting next to him anymore. He frowns when he notices that the only thing having remained in his spot are his shoes by the legs of the chair. The only noise is a single vase, shaking out of balance and catching itself to the sound of humming glass. He can’t hear him coming.

He turns around just as Will throws the table runner around his neck and pulls. Perez grabs one of the vases to hit him but misses and it shatters on the floor. Will holds the cloth steadfast in his hands and gives it another heavy tug that causes Perez to fall over on his chair. His foot kicks the table as he falls, just as Hannibal steps out of the kitchen, balancing three plates of dessert on one arm and catching the table with his free hand. Everything on the table falls off and lands on the floor in a mighty orchestra of shattering pieces.

Slowly, this orchestra becomes all that Will can hear. He is on the floor with him, both struggling, groaning, Perez gasping for air while Will is crushing his windpipe. He is a strong man, bigger than Will, but he can feel himself squeezing the life out of him. Distantly, he thinks he can hear music, soft and sweet, while the glass and plates keep breaking before his mind’s eye, the shards of the shattered vase crunching beneath their wrestling bodies.

The fabric between his hands becomes an extension of himself, like bones growing out of them, like antlers boring into the flesh of the man’s neck. Blood is running where he pierces him, from his neck and throat, out of his mouth, then out of his eyes as his head falls back between Will’s legs. A red pool is forming around him but he doesn’t let go, antlers pressing harder into flesh, demanding more, wanting to tear it all apart, wanting to...

He feels a hand on his shoulder, and everything turns quiet. Hannibal is kneeling beside him but Will needs to blink a few times before he comes into focus.

“It is done, Will.”

Will looks back at Perez. He is not moving. Won’t ever move again. No blood, no piercing wounds. Only a red line around his neck. No antlers growing out of Will’s hands. They are shaking from all the strain, aching from the tight grip. He just strangled someone. And it wouldn’t be the first time, he tells himself.

“I’m sorry about the mess.”

“Nothing to apologise for,” Hannibal says. “I enjoyed it.”

Of course he did. And what’s more, Will knows he himself did too. He gets up from the floor, shards falling from his clothes, walks to the front door without a word and leaves.


	3. iii: rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Will also knows what will happen next. What maybe should have happened a long time ago. They gravitate towards each other on magnetic fields, but they never seem to get as close as they need to._

Will is sitting on white sand, staring at the sea. The soft push and pull of the water, the waves overlapping each other, transforming into spiralling white foam. The ocean is not the same as his stream. It comes in pulses. It has a heartbeat. A living, breathing entity. But water has always moved something in him. Calmed him, drowned him in his own bed, painted him red and consumed him, almost fully. It seems only logical that he should someday end up on the bottom of it. Almost cruel how the sea has spared him so far.

He has been staring at its ripples for what feels like hours. He is almost surprised that Hannibal only finds him now. Not that he wasn’t always with him anyway. It’s funny what Hannibal considers polite, like leaving him alone, when he must know that he has comfortably made himself a home in the back of Will’s head ages ago.

He changed the suit jacket for a short-sleeved dusty pink shirt. Will keeps noticing the subtle changes in his appearance. Without the dark colours, without the suits and with his hair slowly growing longer again, he’s almost blending into the colour scheme of the tropics, like he had blended perfectly into the Victorian-esque darkness of his Baltimore house all these years ago. Is this another tactic? Another person suit? If it is, Will sadly has to admit as if he didn’t know better, it is working.

The setting sun is dipping the world into pastel colours and the moon is rising out of it. He can’t believe he’s thinking this, but when Hannibal sits down next to him he really wishes he would say something. The man always has something to say. Will turns his head from the water towards him and his eyes are already awaiting him. Hannibal has always been waiting for him to look back, after all.

“I don’t know why we’re still alive,” Will says.

Their gazes return to the sea once more.He feels set back to their reunion in Florence beneath the Botticelli, both studying the painting when all they wanted to do was study each other.

After a moment of silence, Hannibal nods towards the scene before them, the colours flowing into each other from yellow to pink to deep blue.

“Life is beautiful. There is much to live for.” Then, after Will gives him something between a laugh and a snort, “But I assume you’re referring to the righteousness of our survival up to this point. Why are we still breathing while so many others are not?”

Hannibal turns to him again and Will mirrors him. This time he dares to lock eyes. “What is left out there to live for,” he says, to Hannibal or to himself he doesn’t know, but they are the same, “when we laid waste to all that we had?”

And because they are the same, Will thinks he can feel the air between them fill with a mutual sadness, a recognition of all the pain caused, of all the hearts broken. He didn’t know pride and regret could exist simultaneously, but here they are, conjoined. Hannibal lets a few beats pass between them, but Will already knows what he will say.

“Each other.”

Will also knows what will happen next. What maybe should have happened a long time ago. They gravitate towards each other on magnetic fields, but they never seem to get as close as they need to. Desperately want to. Will is the first to reach out, surprising himself. His hand finds Hannibal’s cheek, rough from a thin layer of silver stubble, and strokes his thumb over the small scar on his cheekbone.

“Sometimes I’m still convinced this is all just another fever dream.”

Hannibal gives a small smile. “There are worse things to dream. But I am as real as you are.”

Something is changing in him at Will’s touch. The power Will has over him ... if he thinks too much about it he’ll become lightheaded.

“That might be just as scary.” He gives him a warm smile, eyes dropping to his mouth. That all-consuming mouth. He knows there’s no escape from it, one way or another.

Hannibal turns his head in Will’s hand and kisses his palm. Will sighs at the sweetness of it.

“We have given each other so many scars and bruises,” Will murmurs, “I am not sure I can understand anything coming from you that is not violent.”

“I have always been gentle in my violence.” He kisses his palm again. “With you, always.”

The light is fading quickly now, and the promise of night changes something in Will. He knows Hannibal in the dark. But to face him so openly and with such kindness? Here, as the blue sea slowly changes to black? It was next to this black beast of sea that they had been reborn. When Will resurrected his personal devil, he chose his own demons as well. For all he knew, the whole sea could have turned to blood then, marked by their sins but black in the moonlight.

“What are you thinking about?” Hannibal asks, knowing he drifted away.

But since Will couldn’t say all that, he says, “That colour looks funny on you.”

Hannibal lets out a wholehearted laugh at that, surprising them both. The look he gives him then, oh my. Will should be used to his eyes on him by now, shouldn’t he? But maybe now it scares him more than ever. Now that every good reason not to give in to him has slowly been stripped away, layer by layer, leaving them bare and far, far away from any illusion of morality.

“Shall we head back?”

Will nods, and when Hannibal stands he holds out his hand for Will to take it. Will does, and once he’s standing next to him he contemplates keeping it in his. Walking back with Hannibal hand in hand. But they’re not like this. They don’t do this. So he lets go.

Back in the house it seems as though nothing had ever happened. The traces of Will’s violence erased, the shards removed, the body stored away. Hannibal watches him take it all in.

“Do you wish I had left it as it was?” he asks.

“Would’ve made it easier to know what happened and what didn’t.”

Will doesn’t look at him but at the empty floor where Señor Perez lost his life. He remembers Abigail’s words from years and years ago when she said she had expected a body outline of tape, and Will had told her they only do that when the victim is still alive.

“You happened,” Hannibal whispers, suddenly very close. “And you were beautiful.”

He can feel Hannibal’s breath on his neck, his words so close, like they were coming from his own head. Yes, beautiful. It was not long ago that he would never have dared to turn around in a moment like this, too afraid of himself and what he might do. But now he turns and faces him.

Left bare, without any illusion of morality, what reason was there to still resist the gravity that is pulling him to his darkness?

With their faces inches from each other, Will’s voice is but a low rumble. “What will we do with him?”

He watches Hannibal’s eyes wandering over his face, dropping to his mouth and staying there. “What do you want to do with him?”

Will feels so incredibly powerful, he feels almost drunk on it.

“I want to change him.”

He thinks he can see Hannibal’s pupils widen at his words. He has wanted this for years. Will could give this to him. To them.

“But not today,” he adds quickly. “I need to get the dogs.”

With that he leaves him very abruptly, leaving behind a space made of the bloodthirsty haze that was building between them. Sometimes he really wonders when Hannibal will finally snap and kill him for such rudeness. Evidently, it would not be today.


	4. iv: citrus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will can't sleep. What could be done about that?

Will can’t sleep. It’s nothing new. He might have spent more time in his life rolling from one side to the other side of his bed than actually sleeping in it. But since they arrived here something is beginning to change. He is not waking up in fear, and he is not lying awake afraid of his own dreams. Instead, he wakes up with a longing.

The dreams have not changed much, the blood is still the same. But when he wears the blood of Hannibal’s victims now, he can appreciate how well it fits him. Like a second skin. This violence used to torment him like an animal on his back, but now? Now violence is the eye of the storm he’s steering his boat towards, like it’s the only thing that will keep him safe. He doesn’t quite know what to do with this new truth.

So he doesn’t sleep. He showers, puts on pyjama pants and a shirt, takes the shirt off again because it’s too damn hot. Stands in the garden for a bit to look at the moon and watch how the wind shakes the leaves of their citrus tree. Drinks juice in the light of the open fridge straight out of the carton because he knows it would annoy Hannibal if he saw him. Now he is lying on the sofa with the dogs cuddled up against him. He misses his pack sometimes. Not as much as he thought he would. He knows they’re in good hands, but he can’t think about that too much because what good would it do him? Ivy bumps her wet nose into his face as if she can hear his thoughts.

“I know,” Will tells her. But he’s lying. He doesn’t.

Suddenly, they’re all startled by a loud noise from above. Fern jumps from the sofa and yelps, but Will is already on his feet. _Hannibal_.

He rushes upstairs and finds him in the bathroom. On the floor. The light is off, so Will turns it on and falls to his knees beside him.

“What happened?”

Will tries to help him sit up and sees that he is pressing a hand to the bandage around his stomach.

“Did any wounds open?”

Hannibal removes his hand. No blood. “No. I just slipped.” His voice sounds thin and drowsy from sleep.

Will looks over to the small puddle, left over from his nightly shower. Shit.

“Why didn’t you turn on the light?”

“I see well in the dark.”

“Evidently not well enough.” He has never thought about being careful with Hannibal. He’s never had to be, before. “I’ve never seen you slip.”

Hannibal huffs a small laugh but his face is still tense. “Are you saying you would have liked to see it?”

“I’m saying it’s not like you.”

Something is wrong with him. He underestimated Hannibal’s need to heal because of course Hannibal would go out of his way to hide any human needs he has unless ...

“You knew I would come,” Will whispers to himself.

“Will, stop.”

“You wanted to see if I worried about you, if I-“

“Will.” Hannibal cups his cheek, forcing him to look at him. His hand is cold this time. “We have to stop this. If we are to do this ... to live together ... we have to stop the mistrust. I slipped, Will. And you are the only person who I will allow to be witness of that.” His voice is gentle. But his eyes are deadly.

He is right, of course. Will snaps out of something and into something else. “I don’t know any way to be with you that is not built on mistrust.”

They lock eyes and the world stands still for a long time. Something cold breathes down his neck. He thinks it’s Death. Warning him or inviting him in?

“Would you like to learn?”

He can feel Hannibal’s low voice vibrating in the air between them. Without breaking eye contact, Will starts ripping open the bandage around him. Now he doesn’t care if it hurts him. How ironic. Only when he is done he looks down. There is the finest hint of sweat on tanned skin, gleaming in the lamp light. He can only look at him, _touch is always behind a layer of fabric,_ but he feels the need to touch him building. The need to know if he is real. The need to have him, not just in his head but _by_ him.

“It didn’t reopen.” Will breathes relief.

“I told you.”

“Well then, come here, Doctor.”

Will proceeds to apply cream and a new bandage after he has him sit down on the toilet lid. It’s inelegant, here, but they have seen more inelegance of each other. After all, this is what healing is.

“I’m banning you from the kitchen for the next few days.”

“Who will cook for us then?”

“I will.”

Hannibal gives him a bemused smile. “Look at you. First providing the meat and now providing the meal.”

“I never said anything about cooking meat.”

Hannibal’s mouth turns into the smallest of pouts for about half a second, which cannot have been intentional and forces Will to hide a grin.

“But Hannibal ...” he says when he’s finished. Looking down on him feels strange. But then again, rescuing him used to feel strange, too. “Of course, I worry about you. When I thought of you, some part of me always worried about you.”

He smiles, then looks down almost shyly. His eyes trace Will’s skin in front of him, travelling over his chest, up his neck, and Will is suddenly very aware of his own half-nakedness. These amber eyes have always stripped him of something, but now he feels them like touches, raising goosebumps in their wake. When they reach Will’s eyes again, any shyness that might’ve been there is gone.

“Will. Would you come to bed with me?”

Will shallows thickly. He knew this would come. He just didn’t know when or how. Part of him was always convinced this could never be soft, none of them would ask but just take and the bed would be made of corpses.

“Is this so you can tie me down and make sure I don’t wander around all night?”

He swears he sees Hannibal’s pupils widen at the proposal. _God_.

“I think neither you nor your loyal guards would allow any more restraints on you, dear Will.”

Will glances over to the door and indeed, there’s Ivy and Fern watching them with dutiful interest.

“Depends. Can they come, too?” He isn’t sure if he can repress it well enough, but his internal grin is almost diabolical. He’s testing Hannibal.

“I was afraid you’d ask that.”

Will tilts his head, waiting.

“Fine. But they’re not to come into the bed.”

When Will told him he had changed him, he didn’t think it would go this far.

*

  
Will stays behind in the bathroom to brush his teeth. He washes his face and when he comes up to face himself in the mirror, he stops. He looks. Doesn’t know what he expected. He looks quite okay. Tired, yes. The wound on his right cheek is healing, the reddening going down and his beard trying to grow over it. Somehow he doesn’t mind the scars. Even worse, he recognises himself more with every scar that comes. He traces them, with his eyes, his fingers, the inside of his cheek with his tongue, and they all lead back to Hannibal.

_I’ve never known myself as well as I know myself when I’m with him._

Maybe that is why it’s so easy to meet him in his bedroom. He thought it would feel like entering the lion’s den. But it doesn’t. 

“Which side do you prefer?” Hannibal asks.

Will has been in this room countless times. But never at night. Never in the dark. Never with the promise of sharing a bed with Hannibal Lecter.

“Never thought about it. I move too much in my sleep to have preferences.”

The dogs follow him into the bedroom much more reluctantly. Apparently, they know better than Will.

“I will take the left, then.”

While Hannibal lies down, Will tends to the dogs, maybe to calm them, maybe to calm himself. Maybe to keep his back towards Hannibal just a little longer. He knows he’s watching him from the bed. He likes to watch him do the most mundane of things, and Will still wonders why he, of all people, should be so interesting to a man like him. Especially in the moments in which Will is not violent but gentle.

Will finally goes to him, slipping beneath the thin blanket. Will must either be the bravest or the stupidest person on the planet to share such intimacy with something so deadly. But here, this doesn't even occur to him.

Hannibal shifts down on the pillow, and when he turns his head to him, the moonlight hits his face from over his shoulder, striking his high cheekbone. Will mirrors his position. Meeting his eyes across the space on the mattress that forms the gap between them.

“I never know how to feel closing my eyes around you,” Will confesses, “You always seem to leave chaos in your wake.”

He remembers rescuing a tied-up Hannibal from Muskrat Farm when he should have cut his throat, immediately being struck by a blow to the head, and waking up to blood and torn flesh around him. He doesn’t know if it’s worse not to see Hannibal’s acts firsthand instead of reconstructing them in his mind, or if there’s even a comfort in knowing Hannibal will always lay waste to the rude like a beast when it is set free.

“I closed my eyes,” says Hannibal, “when we were standing on the cliff.”

Will feels the scar on his cheek burn from the memory, a glow that heats his whole face. A mix of adrenaline, epiphany. Arousal. Sometimes every one of his scars hurts when he looks at him. He wonders if Hannibal feels it too. _A daily stab of hunger?_

“I meant what I said there, you know?” Will whispers. It’s the kind of truth that only comes to light in the darkness. Still, he knows Hannibal is smiling.

“I know.”

“I don’t know what that makes me.”

Hannibal considers him for a long time.

“I think you do.”


	5. v: coffea

Will doesn’t remember when they fell asleep, but he wakes up to a warmth on his back and the slow rhythm of hot breaths on his neck. Blinking his eyes open, he remembers. _Yes_. Him and Hannibal falling asleep together. He thought it would come to this eventually, something of a tenderness between them. But has he not always been tender with him, somehow? Has he been hoping for this more than he previously admitted to himself? After all, he cannot deny that he craves ... something. Warm skin. Touch. Maybe even pain. And how, at this point, could he deny that any of these things would satisfy him from anyone who is not Hannibal? Perhaps he has always known that.

He wants him. It’s under his skin, and every breath on his back carves that fact into him further. Turning around slowly, Will is ready to face whatever would await him on the other side, except ...

“Fern?”

Not Hannibal. It’s a fully-grown Golden Retriever that is curled up next to him. That’s... a little embarrassing. He sits up on the bed to look around the room but the only other presence is Ivy, who has captured Hannibal’s pillow. The man in question is nowhere to be seen. He swears if he is making some fancy breakfast, ignoring Will telling him to stay out of the kitchen, he’s going to ... Oh, threatening a serial killer, that has always gone well, hasn’t it?

He pushes the blanket away to get out of bed and look for Hannibal. He is halfway down the stairs when he stops.

“Hann-“

There are two people from the police sitting at their dining table.

“...Hello?”

And Will is still in his pyjama pants. _Only_ his pyjama pants.

“Buenas.” They greet him. They stare at him. Will blinks. But he doesn't understand.

“Good morning, Will.” Hannibal comes around the corner with two steaming cups of coffee. He meets his gaze for a second. “How did you sleep?”

He turns to the police and places the cup in front of them, looking from one to the other, hospitable as he is. “Dos cafés negros, señora. Señor.”

They nod at him, give a short _Gracias_. Will still doesn’t understand. He murmurs a short, “I’ll, uhm, get dressed,” before he runs back up the stairs.

Will can hear distant Spanish in the colour of Hannibal’s voice while he is changing. He can’t help but feel like there will always be secrets about Hannibal to uncover. Always something he surprises him with. He himself has never truly gotten to the point of fluency in another language nor travelled much outside of the States. If they weren’t so far past this point, Will could almost be jealous of him. The ease with which he speaks, with which he impresses a crowd, never stumbling, never misspeaking no matter the language. He stops for a minute and listens to the way his low voice wrapped around the _O_ s and rolled _R_ s like honey.

Will wants to know him. Beyond all his lovely tricks and charming politeness. He thinks of Bedelia and yes, there is the slightest sting of jealousy he has been waiting for. She has seen all this, with him behind the veil.

When he walks down the stairs a second time, the dogs jump out of the door of Hannibal’s bedroom, following him.

“Es él?” the policeman asks as he spots Fern trotting behind him.

“Yes,” Hannibal changes to English smoothly with Will’s arrival. “My husband found him near our house about a week ago. Isn’t that so, Will?” he smiles at Will, overly polite.

But Will can’t stop staring at the policeman and woman’s uniforms. He doesn’t want them in their house. He doesn’t want Hannibal’s fake politeness directed at him. He wants them out.

They must have noticed his resentment because now they are staring back.

“Will?” Hannibal asks again.

Will turns his head to him, not attempting to hide his dislike at first. “Why are they here?” He lets a few seconds pass before he shifts into something more convincingly concerned. “Has something happened?”

“A local farmer has disappeared,” says Hannibal.

The policewoman slides a picture of Perez across the kitchen table for Will to see. There he is. The blood returns, the antlers boring through skin, the ache in his hands. Will blinks a few times until it’s clear again. Just a picture.

“Never seen him.”

“His wife says that he was on the way to a neighbour and never returned,” says the policewoman.

Hannibal looks at Will. “My husband called him. It’s very likely he was on the way here.” Then, to the police. “He went for a walk with our dog and found this little one in the bushes.”

Hannibal holds out his hand for Fern to sniff. It’s the first time Fern has ever dared to come that close to him, and despite the situation Will feels a small smile tuck at his mouth. Meanwhile Ivy, young and exciting as she is, has begun to play with the laces of the policeman’s shoes. 

“But he never arrived.” Will finishes the story while meeting Hannibal’s eyes. Yes, that’s what it would be. He’s done this before. A house in the middle of nowhere, yes, it is easy to get lost out here. He has never seen him in his life and that would be the story.

“So between five and eight p.m. you were here, waiting for him, sí?“

“No,” Will replies. “No, not waiting for him. I’ve seen the poster of the dog with his number and called, so he could come around, but he didn't say when he would come.”

“But yes,“ Hannibal added, “we were both at home. Like on most evenings, we like to spend them together and have dinner.“

He looks at Will with a mixture of mischief, bemusement and affection that only he knows only Will would be able to read, from the corner of his mouth and the twinkle in his eyes. It's the affection that dries Will's mouth out the most. _Smug bastard_.

“Uhu.” The police makes a few barely convinced sounds, then they look at each other.

“Anything else, officers?” Hannibal asks, smiling as he does.

“No, I think that would be all for now, señores. Thanks for the coffee.” They probably want to get out of here as soon as they can.

“What about the dog?” Will finds himself asking before he can stop himself.

“Hmh?”

“The dog. Will you take the dog back to the farm?”

The policeman seems a little startled by that, looking from Will to Fern whose tail is flopping around happily.

“I don’t know. But we can ask the wife, I suppose.”

“We can ask her.”

They all look to Hannibal at that. Will is calm, but he might be terrified as well. It’s getting harder and harder to tell. What is Hannibal saying?

“We can pay her a visit and ask the late wife what she wants to do about the dog. See if we can be of any help.”

Hannibal smiles at him - again. But what on earth is he _saying_? Will killed her husband. He killed him. He feels sick. He feels fine? He blinks, not enough, too little, and his eyes feel dry and burned out. He lets out a shaky breath, standing where he has been standing for minutes, before he blinks again and realises that they’re gone. Now it’s just him and Hannibal again. And the dogs. Of course. The dogs.

“Will.”

He feels a hand on his own, then a short sharp pain travelling up his arm. Looking down at his hand, now covered by Hannibal’s, he finds it clenched around the back of a kitchen chair. Yesterday’s pain. The grip around the table runner.

“ _Will_.”

He is near. Another hand, on the back of his neck, holding him. Hannibal slowly lifts Will’s hand from the chair and his grip loosens. His eyes shift to Hannibal’s, but he doesn’t see him. Not yet, not really. A black beast with antlers. And then it’s gone. They might as well be in the barn again, Hannibal just having taken a pistol from his fingers. There he is. Maroon eyes capturing him, bringing Will back to him.

How does he do it? Read him like that? See him? Like it was the easiest thing in the world for him.

Maybe it is. But would that mean Will had become boring? Predictable? His mental instability, his sudden bursts of suppressed trauma bubbling to the surface and the moments where he just ... goes. Not physically, he can’t do that anymore, couldn’t leave this man any more than salt could leave the ocean. They have diluted into each other until their ends and their beginnings have dissolved. But he still leaves him mentally, often enough. More often than he’d like to.

Hannibal should be the one to bear it though, shouldn’t he? He made him that way. No ... that’s a lie. He couldn’t have made Will. He merely sharpened the edges that were already there.

Will finds his eyes, finally steady.

“Are we going to kill her?”

The wife. Not you, _we_.

Hannibal notices this, of course, and he tilts his head curiously. His voice is low and purposefully calming as he speaks. “I didn't say anything about killing her. Yet.” He pauses a moment, pinning Will down with that curious, curious gaze. “Do you want us to?”

Will feels goosebumps rising over the back of his neck, becoming hyper-aware of the warmth Hannibal’s hand presses into him there. But he doesn’t respond to the question.

“What were you thinking?”

Something sparks in Hannibal’s eyes, and he finally breaks eye contact, though his hand lingers and smooths down Will’s shoulder before he lets go. Will suddenly feels unstable without it.

“As I’ve said before,” he says as he turns away to take the empty mugs of coffee and carry them to the kitchen, “I’m very supportive of local products.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated in a while! I'm trying to get back into a routine and there's a lot of things going on, but I will update this more frequently again and hope you enjoy the results. :)


	6. vi: hibiscus

As Hannibal leaves him, the room becomes clearer. But also colder. Something nudges at his leg and his chain of thought and fog finally breaks. Fern and Ivy. Right. Feeding the dogs.

After he’s done with that, Hannibal serves him a plate of breakfast too, and Will doesn’t fail to see the irony in that. Hannibal claims to have already eaten, so he’s having breakfast in the living room by himself. Serves him right. He needs to think about what is happening to him.

He knows what is happening to him. But has he processed it? Could anyone process it? He doesn’t often let himself think, let alone say it out loud, but he did choose this life. Will Graham chose to free a cannibalistic serial killer from a lifetime of prison, and then he slayed a monster with him. Not to punish the monster, no. For something much more primal than justice. For the bloodbath of it. For the way his own monster looked at him then. For beauty.

He knows all this. One doesn’t just leave his wife without having thought about this before. A future with Hannibal had never been possible for him, so he picked the next best thing. A life he thought he wanted. A life he did want for a while. Enjoyed, loved. But Hannibal, he is like lightning. Will cannot simply touch one part of him, no, Hannibal will capture all of him, run through his whole body and immobilise him where he stands. And once he had almost forgotten about the thrill of it, all it had taken was one little reminder. A reminder that Will can cast lightning, too. A beautiful, destructive force. Who would want to give up that power for anything in the world?

Will and Hannibal, two destructive forces. He knows that. Now, where do they go from here? Will seems to ache all the time. It doesn’t take much to break him, send his mind into a different, hollow place, when all he wants is to stay with Hannibal.

Doing the dishes, Will can see him from the kitchen window, working in the garden. Aching all the time. It is something special, seeing him work with his hands. He’s imagined a lot of things Hannibal did with his bare hands, seen results of what these hands can do, but rarely has he been witness to their deeds in the flesh. But now everything is simpler. The house, the decor, their life.

He takes a can of soda from the fridge and joins him outside. The weather is as wonderful as it is nearly every day, which means wonderfully sunny and hot. Will is sitting on their small garden wall between a stone path and the front lawn and is already sweating doing nothing more than drinking soda and looking at Hannibal.

He watches him shamelessly, as shame has become as rare between them as boundaries over the years. How Hannibal can bear the heat in his linen trousers, white sleeve shirt and hat while gardening is inexplicable to him. Though he does sweat, and here Will is also shameless in how his eyes roam over the rolled-up sleeves that show tanned skin and veins of his forearms and the fine layer of sweat gleaming where he has opened one more button on his shirt, exposing the hair on his chest.

Will does ache, he does, and he can’t deny his mouth is suddenly very dry despite holding a drink in his hand. He doesn’t remember when it had started, this appetite that arises when looking at Hannibal. Maybe it’s been there from the very beginning. He remembers being confused when he first began to notice it. He’s long been past this phase of surprise when the appetite comes. What he cannot tell either, now that they have blurred so much, is when this appetite has grown into hunger.

“Are you happy?” Will asks him. The shadow of a small cloud hovers between them on the grass.

Hannibal seems to stop for a moment, not to think about an answer but to contemplate why Will would ask him. He gives him a quick glance before he shoves the garden shovel into the dark brown earth.

“You’re here,” he says and smiles. “We’re both here together. I couldn’t be more pleased, Will.”

“Pleased is not happy.”

Will watches his hands as they push the dirt away gently, creating a hole in the ground. Everything his hands do is gentle. Will can’t look away.

“Isn’t it?” Hannibal asks.

“I don’t know. One can be pleased about specific things.” Will takes another sip of soda and the cloud’s shadow washes over Hannibal’s form like a wave over a rock. “Doesn’t happiness require permanence?”

Hannibal makes a thoughtful noise in his throat as he takes his newly bought hibiscus out of its plastic pot and lowers it into the dug-out hole.

“Are you happy, Will?”

Of course, he should have expected the question being directed back at him, but for some reason he did not.

“I haven’t thought about it.” He’s not sure if it’s a lie. Maybe he has just forgotten what happiness can be.

“But you asked me about it.”

Will doesn’t answer, still staring at Hannibal’s hands. They are pressing into the earth around the plant, tucking it in. Hannibal lowers his head, his voice perfectly even but the shadow from the rim of his hat falls over his eyes.

“Does it feel wrong to be happy here with me?”

Will shakes his head slightly without noticing. That’s not it. Right and wrong feel far away now. Can empty, he plays with the lid opener, moving it back and forth between his fingers. His thumb wanders over the opening along the sharp edges of it. He could cut himself so easily.

“My mind is still foggy,” he murmurs.

Hannibal’s hands ghost over the plant’s pointed leaves, careful not to touch the buds of blossoms awaiting their bloom. They will be bright red when they open. Passionately so.

“Is there something I can do to help?”

The lid opener makes a crack as Will accidentally breaks it off and it falls into the hollow can. Will looks at Hannibal. Hannibal looks back, and it feels like they haven’t seen each other in forever. He’s closed off to him again and Will doesn’t like that. Jesus, they have fallen asleep in the same bed together but now they are miles apart. But the night is safer than daylight. For predators, at least.

“We talked a lot about the murders I reconstruct in my mind. We don’t talk enough about the murders I commit myself,” Will says.

Hannibal finds his eyes across the grass between them, and they light up like a striking match.

“Who did you see when you murdered Señor Perez? Was it me?”

He tilts his head, and for a second Will could swear they were sitting opposite each other in the two chairs of a long deserted doctor’s office.

“No. I don’t see myself killing you anymore. It stopped.”

Another cloud moves over them. Will feels more confident in its shadow, but his voice is still but a whisper. There’s something he has barely admitted to himself.

“I want you to see me.”

Hannibal pauses. “I do see you.”

Will wants his hands to touch him, the dirt to stick to him. He wants a visualisation of how he feels inside. Hannibal’s intrusion visible on him, Hannibal’s violence as his violence. How are they so far apart when they are the same? It feels like his scars are not enough. What would be enough?

He thinks of the mushroom case from so many years ago. Connection after death. In his mind’s eye he sees Perez in the dirt, his hand in the air, hand after hand after hand behind him. A farm of victims.

They still haven’t changed him.

Will gets up, and the can falls from the wall and rolls on to the sound of thin metal on stone. He crouches down next to Hannibal. In the sun of a dry morning every movement is one too much, although it’s not as unbearable yet as it would be after noon. Still, his skin feels tight and hot. He takes up the shovel and starts digging the next hole into the ground.

“I told you to rest,” Will mumbles while avoiding his gaze. “You disobeyed me.”

He can smell Hannibal’s close presence and feels like an animal thinking this. Though he knows Hannibal can smell him, too. He wonders what it tells him about Will. He’s wondering many things.

“You told me to stay out of the kitchen. I followed your order.” Hannibal’s voice is close, a bemused rumble over his shoulder.

“You know what I meant by that. Now you’re using my words against me to do as you please.”

Hannibal certainly is an expert on that. Will cannot blame him. But he has no other way to tell him that cares about him.

His body tenses suddenly as he feels a pair of fingers tucking a strand of hair behind his ear. As he turns his head, Hannibal lets those fingers smooth under his jaw, but they might as well be running down his spine. They smell of wet earth and flowers.

There it is. The dirt from his fingers marking him, particles catching in his beard. How rude of him.

“Perhaps you should be more clear about what you want next time, dear Will.”

Will swallows. He knows what he wants. He just doesn’t know how.

Before he can answer, Hannibal lowers his hand and his attention is back on the flowers. Like nothing ever happened. Will still feels the imprint of his hand like a ghost. _Touch me again._

“Speaking of the kitchen,” Hannibal changes the topic smoothly, “What’s for dinner?”

“What?”

Will doesn’t miss the little smile that’s tucking at the corner of Hannibal’s mouth. He fills the space around the second hibiscus up with earth using the other side of the shovel until the plant is nicely tucked into its new home.

“I’ve heard there is an excellent farm not too far from us.”

With a sudden force he stabs the ground and the shovel stays there, half sunken. Will felt that somewhere in his stomach. When Hannibal looks at him again, the smile on his face does something very dangerous to him. The false innocence of it, Will only knows that too well.

“How about a shopping trip?”


	7. vii: mint

The car ride isn't long, but it's quiet. Too quiet. Will didn’t think it possible but yes, Hannibal is being too quiet for his liking. As though reading his mind, Hannibal speaks up without taking his eyes off the road.

“Is there something you want to talk about, Will?”

Hannibal still hasn’t told him about what exactly it is he wants to do. If there is any plan at all. Will hasn’t asked.

“No,” says Will and reaches forward to turn on the radio.

The first thing that comes on is some Cuban bolero song that Will could swear he has heard before. At least it sounds like typical Cuban music to him. It’s not as if they had been socialising much or gone out anywhere since they arrived here to consciously listen to any music.

He is about to change the channel, looking for something that would better suit Hannibal’s tastes, when Hannibal makes a noise in his throat that sounds like objection. Will’s hand hovers over the buttons, confused.

“You like this?”

“I like listening to traditional music of the country I’m in. I have always found emerging myself in the places I am visiting to be a very enjoyable experience.”

Will doesn’t know what to say. Somehow imagining Hannibal genuinely enjoying listening to something other than Bach or Tchaikovsky or Italian operas feels off. He thought by now he would know him so well, but these details ... they are entirely new. Of course they would be. Details are the kind of thing you only learn with domesticity. There was something of that in the very beginnings of their relationship. But it’s gone now.

The silence between them stretches once more, only now accompanied by the sound of men enthusiastically singing in Spanish, fast strumming and maracas.

“Can you dance, Will?” Hannibal asks after a while.

“What?”

“Do you know how to dance?” He doesn’t appear to be joking.

“A simple box step, if that can be considered dancing,” Will says, looking over at Hannibal. His eyes are on the road, though he sees a tiny smile tucking on his lips.

“Hardly.”

“Oh, so what do you mean by dancing, then?” Will snaps. “Could you dance to this?”

He points at the radio that is still happily playing tunes that make Will think of hot Spanish nights and wide-open lace shirts on sweating men.

Hannibal doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t have to. That tiny smile, now widening until he is almost showing teeth, says it all.

Will’s raises his brows in disbelief. “Really?”

“I attended a few courses on salsa and bachata on my visits to Spain when I was a young man.” He finally turns his head, that bemused smile and mischievous sparkle in his eyes hitting Will in a way he did not expect. “It helped impress some people.”

Now, this is rather annoying. There has to be something Hannibal is not good at. There must be. Even worse, Will’s head has inconveniently swapped the faceless dancing men for Hannibal now, eyes closed as the music guides his body in a wide-open lace shirt, his chest shining with sweat in the candlelight. He feels his face heat up, the air in the car suddenly too thick to breathe. He shakes his head, looks away. Candlelight? What the fuck is wrong with him?

They pull the car onto a parking space overlooking a vast field of crops. Hannibal gets out, holding the door open for Will before he can open it himself. His charming serial killer. Will wants to roll his eyes at him but is too slow.

The gate is wide open, leading them behind the house that is painted bright red. It is a little chaotic but not unpleasantly so. A stack of bricks in a corner, a half empty sack of charcoal leaning against a grill, three chairs around table with a cheap plastic tablecloth on top. Will and Hannibal throw each other a glance.

A second later something breaks through the backdoor and they look up in synch at the young woman who pushes her way outside, back first and her arms tightly wrapped around a big bag of soil.

“My apologies,” Hannibal tells her.

“Jesus!” She visibly jumps and the bag falls to the ground, barely missing her feet.

“I'm afraid not. We didn’t mean to startle you,” he finishes. Then, tilting his head as he considers her reaction and accent, “You’re American.”

“Yes. And you’re on my property.”

Will, somewhere between all this, remembered his manners and is by her side to pick up the soil.

“I can manage, thank you,” she snaps.

“I didn’t doubt that,” he replies, standing back up and taking her in fully for the first time. It appears she is doing the same, looking from one well-dressed foreign-looking man to the other. Not her usual clientele, most likely.

She is wearing slightly oversized jeans dungarees, marked from hard work by their dirt and grass stains and patches where the fabric has ripped. Her brown curls bounce around her head like corkscrews and her dark skin is shimmering with a thin layer of sweat in the sun. She’s young, much younger than Perez was, and for a moment Will wonders if they are at the right place.

“Are you here for the cows?”

Hannibal smiles at the question. “We are not.”

“What do you want then?”

“We’d be interested in some of your products. Do you sell meat as well?” Hannibal asks.

The young woman looks from Hannibal to Will, who suddenly feels like he is standing too close to her to not be perceived as a threat. Is he a threat? He doesn’t think that he would be, there is no reason to kill her yet. _Yet_. But one never truly knows with Hannibal, and the fact that Will can already feel himself straining against the idea when he looks at her, the idea of doing her any harm, makes him take a step back. He could be a threat.

The truth is, he doesn’t know what he would do if Hannibal told him to act. Is Hannibal relying on that? The thought makes him just a little angrier with him. He could have told Will what he plans to do, prepared him. Instead, he trusts Will to blindly follow. And Will did. Will does.

She gives Will another look before returning it to Hannibal. “No... No, we don’t sell meat. They’re only for milking. I was insisting on that.”

“Vegetarian?” Will asks.

“No. I just don’t want death to be so near all the time.” She huffs a laugh, but her smile is bitter. “Kinda ironic now, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you think it is a little hypocritical?" Hannibal asks. "To enjoy the fruits of death but not want to partake in their harvest?”

When she turns to Hannibal again, she looks angry. Who can blame her? An expensively dressed European man comes to her property and criticises her morals before bothering to introduce himself. It is a little forward, even for Hannibal. In a way, it feels cathartic to hear her raise her voice against him.

“Who are you? What do you want from me? If you are from the police or whatever, trying to provoke a confession out of me, I already told them all I know. That I didn’t kill him.”

“I never said you did.”

Hannibal takes a step towards her and her posture stiffens. Does she recognise him? If she’s from the States, it’s not unlikely. Now Will stiffens as well.

“In fact, the police questioned us as well,” Hannibal continues. “May we sit down?”

He gestures to the plastic table in their middle, but she doesn’t move.

“You’re the new neighbours,” she says slowly. “With the dog.”

If even she is calling them neighbours when they live a ten-minute drive away, they must really be one of the only houses in the area. It would be so easy to dispose of her, too. Will catches himself with this thought and releases a shaky breath. He’s thinking about the logic of killing, not the morals of it. It’s what Hannibal would want him to think.

“Yes. Do you want it back?” Will says quickly, almost as an offering, an apology for his horrible thoughts.

She is smart. She must know how easy it would be. The three of them are the main suspects for the murder of her husband. And she knows that she didn’t do it.

But she is ignoring Will. Staring at Hannibal very intently now, like a deer holding eye contact with a wolf, trying to keep it in place long enough to run.

Her voice is quiet, but it doesn’t shake. “Did you kill him?”

Will swallows hard. To someone who does not know him, Hannibal probably looks perfectly neutral. To Will, he looks almost proud of the accusation.

“No,” Hannibal says.

It’s not a lie. Will doesn’t know what he would say if she asked him. But before she can, Hannibal gives the question back to her.

“Did you kill him?”

She waits. Will feels his fingers vibrating, preparing to grab her if she attempts to run. But she is perfectly still.

“No,” she says.

With this, the thread of tension snaps. Will breathes out, spreads his fingers wide to shake off the tingle. Hannibal and her are still staring at each other, but she finally gives in, taking a step to the side and gestures to the chair in front of her.

“Sit,” she says. “I’ll make some tea.”

Will and Hannibal sit down as she disappears into the house. Hannibal locks eyes with him over the table for the first time since the backdoor opened and tilts his head, probably reacting to the look that Will gives him.

Will’s mouth is a thin line and he raises his brows. A look that says, _What the hell is your game here, Hannibal?_

Hannibal raises his chin. _Who says I’m playing?_

Will narrows his eyes. _You’re always playing_.

Worse than that, the thought from earlier closes in on Will more and more. If he isn’t playing her, he is most certainly playing Will. Does he want him to kill again?

Hannibal reaches for Will’s hand across the table, and Will considers pulling his away. But when those warm fingers touch the tip of his, his hand twitches towards them instead. Hannibal’s hand slips beneath his, stroking his thumb over Will’s knuckles.

Now that could mean … anything. Either Hannibal knows the soft touch of his fingers on Will’s skin travels directly down his neck, softening his very bones and distract him from his anger, or … or he just wants to touch him. But Hannibal lives for abundance. It must always be both.

The young woman comes back carrying a tray with a teapot, steaming from hot water, and three cups, each with a differently shaped tea strainer in them. Will’s has the form of an astronaut.

“I hope you like mint. It’s fresh from the herb garden. At least something here still grows like it’s supposed to,” she says dryly while pouring the water into each of their cups.

“The harvest is not going well this year?” Hannibal asks.

“Oh, Juan would’ve told you all about it,” she says.

Will can hear Señor Perez’ voice while he watches the colour in his cup slowly dilute, a yellow spiral swirling around the clear water until they mix. _This year the harvest is a pain_.

“So.” She sits down with a certain force, facing them both across the table. “Let’s talk business, shall we? Who the fuck are you? What do you want? What do you _know_?”

“I’m Henry Hughes and this is my husband William,” Hannibal says without skipping a beat.

The names are no surprise to Will. He studied the data on their false passports as soon as Hannibal handed his to him. Yet, there have not been many occasions in which Hannibal referred to Will as ‘William’. Not many people have throughout his life. It moves something in him.

At first, he thought Hannibal had chosen their names without much of a deeper meaning behind it, making it as easy as possible for Will to keep his fairly common name and change his own to something simpler with the same first letter. But when he asked Hannibal about it, he only recited some Shakespeare sonnet and that, as was to be expected of him, remained the only explanation he would give. So Will simply shook his head and did not push him further.

Something in her shifted for a second at the word _husband_.

“I’m Clarice,” she says. For a long moment, this is all she says while she leans back in her chair, crossing her arms, looking between the two of them.

Will blows on his cup, watching her watching them. Is she evaluating the truth in that statement? Is she surprised to hear that they are married because they don’t seem like they are? He can see her eyes flickering to their hands for a second, spotting Will’s wedding ring. Hannibal does not wear one.

“You are married?”

“Yes,” Hannibal purrs. He sounds so pleased, Will almost bites his own lip to taste it.

“And then you move to Cuba? Not exactly the safest place for you.”

Hannibal takes a sip of tea. Does he want Will to participate?

He is suddenly reminded of police work. An interrogation. He can’t stop himself. “I could say the same to you. A young, intelligent woman from the States marries a farmer twice her age and moves to a remote area in Cuba to throw her future away?”

Clarice stares at him. Will continues. “Did you do it for love? Or were you on the run?”

She raises her chin, presses her lips together, her brown eyes intense and unblinking. This time, she would not back down from a staring contest.

“Are you asking me that? Or are you asking yourself, Will Graham?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh oh. Let's all hope she won't be turned into soup.
> 
> Btw, sorry again these updates are not exactly regular. But also thank you so much for reading and leaving comments!! Maybe you've noticed that I keep extending the length of this fic ... Well. You never know with the murder husbands. One day you're planning to write some cute scenes and suddenly ... Plot? I'm as surprised as you are.


	8. viii: willow

Will’s heart makes a leap and doesn’t seem to recover for several beats. It has been a while since he’s heard his own name like this. Like an accusation. _Will Graham_. It brings reality back to him. What he is. What he was. These days, with Hannibal, he is only ever Will. In Hannibal’s mouth it might be a prayer.

Clarice lifts her hands and now there’s a gun in them. She’s pointing it at Hannibal but keeps her eyes on Will, her gaze almost... confused. Disturbed.

“I dreamed about you,” she says.

Will carefully looks over to Hannibal who is still holding his teacup in mid-air, utterly calm.

“I think it was,” she continues, “because I’d read so much about you before. I mean, he’s …” She shakes her head, as if in disbelief that they are both here in front of her. “… He’s Hannibal the Cannibal, we all knew about him. But you …”

But is Hannibal calm? Will steals another quick glance and there it is, the slight strain that pulls the corners of his mouth down behind his teacup. He is intrigued, of course, as he always is, but there is something different in him. The stakes of losing are higher.

“You …”

Her hand is so steady, like the weight of the gun was that of paper. She has held a gun before. She could actually shoot them.

“I don’t know why it makes so much sense to me that I would meet you one day, but it does,” she whispers. Swallows. Her voice bears a slight tremor that her hand does not. “Why did you kill my husband?”

Will’s heart skips another beat. There is no use denying it. He takes a moment, but the answer suddenly seems very clear.

“He was rude.”

Her face does not move. Does not shift. All emotion, possible shock, held inside. Maybe there is no shock at all. She tilts her head in a way that reminds him of Hannibal, and his eyes drop to the gun that is now pointing at Will himself. It points at where her big teary eyes bore into him.

“So this is who you are,” she says.

There is a second that passes in which her hand does seem to shake, her finger brushing the trigger and then ... A shot. The ear-splitting clash of glass. A crack on the ground. A high-pitched white noise that drowns out everything else.

Will whips his head to the side, pressing his hands to his ears. A hot liquid burns into his face in stains. _Blood? His? Hannibal’s?_

As he lifts his head slowly, shards are falling from his hair like raindrops. He can hear every single one of them as if only he, the shards and the drops dripping from his hair existed in a black echo chamber. The sound of them hitting the stones is so loud in his head, he wants to cry.

Looking up, Clarice is gone. No, not gone. She is on the ground, Hannibal standing over her with the pistol in hand. In a second, Will sees it all.

Before the shot, Hannibal threw the teacup in her direction. Clarice, with the instinctual precision of someone who is definitely well-trained in this, shot the cup before it hit her in the face, tearing it into hundreds of pieces of porcelain and tea. She flew back in her chair with the recoil and shock, toppling over and landing backwards on the stone ground. The gun dropped from her hand and Hannibal, immediately on his feet, picked it up, pointing it at the heavily breathing Clarice.

He gives her a few seconds to recover her breath.

“Can you move?” he asks her.

She nods.

“Can you talk?”

“ ... Yes,” she replies hoarsely.

“Good. Please, sit back down. I’d rather not make this uncomfortable for you.”

She struggles her way out of the fallen chair, pushes herself up from the floor. When she stands again, she looks up at Hannibal, as if to reassure herself that she heard him correctly. He doesn’t even bother keeping the gun pointed at her, both his arms relaxing at his sides. Of course, Hannibal has never needed weapons to be a danger. He is the weapon.

“In your own time,” he tells her.

While she puts the chair back up, Hannibal retakes his seat next to Will. He places the pistol on the table between them and looks Will up and down with something in his eyes that could almost be concern. He reaches out, and Will somehow flinches as his hand graces his hair to push the hairline back. A few more shards fall out. His thumb strokes over Will’s temple.

Will can’t look away. He knows this is not the time nor the place, but he cannot stop looking at the way Hannibal looks at him. He opens his mouth, not even sure himself what he is going to say, but then Hannibal pulls back again and he shuts it. A single drop of blood on his thumb. One of the shards must have struck Will's face, broken the skin. Will sees his eyes staring at it for a second too long. Just then, he knows Hannibal must yearn to taste it.

He is holding his breath and realises that he wants him to. That pink, violent tongue all over his wounds. Hannibal’s eyes snap up at his. He doesn’t taste it. Instead, he pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, cleans his fingers and hands it to Will.

Will nods, cleaning his face. When he looks back down at the handkerchief, it is stained with drops of tea and blood. There’s the sudden urge to rip it apart. Maybe he just wants to rip something apart.

Hannibal looks up at Clarice for a moment, then down to the gun on the table, then at Will.

“Do you want this?” he asks him, like Will was his shallow mistress who had just seen a cute dress in a store window.

Will doesn’t reply. Doesn’t know the answer, really. He had always felt safer with a gun, but these days he’s not so sure anymore.

“I am not a fan of guns,” Hannibal says to Clarice.

She takes a shaky breath. “Are you here to kill me?”

“No.”

_No_. For the first time since the car ride, Will’s body relaxes a little.

“We simply want to hear your story,” Hannibal says.

Clarice frowns in disbelief. “My story?”

“Yes. Tell us a story.”

“I was … I was actually gonna be an FBI agent,” Clarice begins, looking at Will and huffing a bitter laugh. Evidently, that path failed them both. “Which is, uhm, even more embarrassing now, considering … because I … just didn’t see it.”

She eagerly wipes a tear from her cheek like she was angry with her own body for reacting this way before she continues.

“I had a fiancé. We, uh, we were going to the same psychology lectures at university, that’s how we met. And he was so … nice to me. So different, but so … kind. Maybe it was the fact that I haven’t had too many of nice people in my life, generally, that made me fall for him, but … I did pretty quickly, and we moved in together. And I still didn’t see it. Guess I didn’t wanna see it.”

Will throws a glance at Hannibal who is listening with polite interest. He realises he can’t even tell if it is polite or real. Only that he knows that look on his face, the therapy look, so well it almost makes him dizzy for a moment with the memory.

“When he came home late at night, bloodshot eyes, he wouldn’t say where he went. More and more often he would ask me if he could borrow a bit of money. One time he came home with a black eye, and of course I confronted him about it, but still nothing. We had a huge fight, and after that I thought … ‘God, you’re such an idiot. You wanna be a criminal investigator and yet you choose to look away from this thing under your own roof.’ So I investigated. And I found everything. He was a drug addict. A fucking drug addict and I didn’t know. I thought it was gonna be something worse at this point, but … Well, don’t have to tell you about worse, do I?”

Will bites the insides of his mouth.

“I told him I knew, and we had another fight, and … He got so scared. He said he owed a shitload of money to some dangerous people. He was so scared I was gonna report him. Because he knew that all I wanted was to get into the academy, and if they found out about him and that I didn’t do anything I wouldn’t be able to. I guess, in a weird way, by not telling me he was trying to protect me. The truth is, I don’t even know what I would’ve done. He didn’t give me that choice.”

Something in Will begins to clench.

“It was a bad fight. He yelled at me, I yelled at him. I shoved him. He fell, and then he … he never got up. And it’s so ironic because … because trying to protect me ended up in me doing the worst thing to him that one can imagine. I ruined my life all by myself.”

She is crying now, but the tears are running down her face like she can’t even feel them.

“How did you get to Cuba?” Hannibal asks quietly.

Clarice huffs a laugh that turns into a sob. She catches herself.

“We needed money. Two broke college students and one with a drug addiction, so … But we had this miraculously nice apartment. I think some friend suggested to turn one of the rooms into a second bedroom, so we could rent it out every once in a while. So that’s what we did. And the guy who was staying with us at the time was …”

“Perez,” Will concludes.

“Yeah. It was actually the second time he was staying with us. He was nice. Even had breakfast with us sometimes because there was only one kitchen. But I had completely forgotten about him then. I remember curling up on the floor next to … to this unmoving body for what could’ve been hours. Days. Then I heard the key in the lock. I was convinced it was the police, that, somehow, they knew. That the whole world must know. But it was Juan. I still don’t know why he did it, but … he calmed me down. Said he believes me that it was an accident. Said he could help me disappear. I was so numb in that moment, I might’ve said yes to anything. I knew that the life I had lived was over then, but there was this one last thought I had, stronger than anything else.”

Will can feel it on his tongue. He could have said the words with her.

“ _I want to live_.”

“You decided to run away with him.” Hannibal says.

She sighs, rubbing her burning eyes, all red from the tears. “Yeah.”

“Why did _he_ do it? Risk everything for a stranger?” Will asks, voice hoarse and stale. The scar in his mouth has begun to hurt again.

“I mean, we weren’t really strangers, but … I’m not sure. I think he was just … lonely.”

Hannibal nods. “Loneliness is an often underestimated personal motivator.”

Will’s head is beginning to throb. There are too many thoughts in his brain and he presses his eyes shut against them.

“Did he ever,” Will starts, “abuse you in any way?”

She shakes her head lightly. “No. He, uhm, he was drinking a lot sometimes. More and more actually, but he never laid a hand on me. Just the dog, as you probably know. Doesn’t mean I think he never would’ve. Love is power, after all. I know that. Love is fear. It was all about control for him.”

His hands twitch on the table. The gun is still there. Or is he twitching towards Hannibal’s hand? Stable himself? _A paddle_. Abruptly, he stands, the chair scraping over stones.

“Can I see the cows?” he asks. It is air he needs, but he is already outside. Air away from this scene.

Clarice huffs a laugh. “I thought you didn’t want the cows.” Then she swallows, looks down. “Sorry, I… I tend to make jokes when I’m nervous or … I don’t know, about to die?” She looks between the two of them, pauses a moment. Takes a deep breath. “You know, there was even a part of me that thought maybe … I could go back now. To the States. I don’t want my life to be a waste.”

“We might help you,” Hannibal says suddenly.

With that, all Will can do is flee.

*

The cows are all shades of brown, big floppy ears and horns. They look nothing like the ones Will remembers from the farms in Virginia, and yet he knows they are cows. _Curious_ , he thinks. But only because he doesn’t want to think about anything else right now, so he forces himself to think about cows. Breathing in deeply, finally. Only him, the animals and the willow tree giving him shade.

He has always liked farms, he realises. They spark in him an almost primal desire that has been with him ever since he can remember. To be far away from everything, completely independent, civilisation but a flicker on the horizon. He has always wanted to try growing his own crops in Wolf Trap but, as it so often goes, never found the time to start. And somehow, civilisation has always come for him in the end.

Now, looking at those big warm eyes of the cow that has taken an interest in him on the other side of the fence, he can imagine growing fond of them as well. They have the power to kill him with their weight alone. But they probably wouldn’t. He can’t say that about most of the things in his life.

He thinks of Muskrat Farm, too. Thinks of the cruelty contained in a man to be able to make pigs into killer machines. Thinks of the power in himself to make a killer machine into … something else. Something that could kill him but probably wouldn’t? He thinks about the fact that Hannibal has recently begun to grow tomato plants in their garden. And there he is. The cow sees him before Will does.

Hannibal stretches his hand out towards the big animal, letting her sniff on it. As the wind blows through the hanging branches, the light dances over his striking features, blowing strands of hair over his forehead. His hair is getting longer again.

“Are we going to adopt a cow next, Will?”

“Depends,” Will says, watching Hannibal’s hand being investigated by the pink wet snout. “Is it going to annoy you?”

“It will annoy me once it has digested all of the grass from our property and is leaving something else in its stead, yes.”

“Then I’m considering it.”

Hannibal’s hand reaches upward towards the cow’s fur between its eyes. He strokes smoothly along the short brown hair. Will can’t look away. He licks his lips.

_If you’re partial to beef products, it is inconvenient to be compassionate towards a cow_.

“In another world,” Hannibal says without looking at him, “the teacup might not have shattered.”

Will simply stares at the side of his face. “I’m not having another daughter with you, Hannibal.”

Hannibal turns his head to him. There is an emotion in his eyes that he can’t name. “We don’t have to kill her,” he says.

“It’s not a question of _either-or_.” Will looks ahead at a herd of cows farther in the distance. “We don’t have to kill her. But I won’t let you bind me to you by the thread of someone else’s trauma again. Not when there is so much trauma in us alone.”

Hannibal follows his gaze. “We are entangled in a ball of yarn.”

“I don’t even know where my trauma begins and yours ends,” Will murmurs. “Only that we are caught in it together.”

Hannibal has retreated his hand and the cow moves on along the fence. For a moment, the only noise around them is the wind in the rustling leaves.

“Is it wise to leave Clarice alone with a gun and excess to a phone?” Will asks.

“She won’t call the police,” Hannibal says.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because she’s unconscious.”

Will promptly looks back at him. Hannibal returns the gaze, something like amusement sparkling in his eyes. This shouldn’t be funny. Will fails to suppress his little smile anyway. He shakes his head at Hannibal’s unsubtle smugness about this.

“Can I ask you something,” Will says. He doesn’t really ask. He knows Hannibal won’t deny him.

“Anything.”

Will’s eyes land on the sharp cut of Hannibal’s cheekbone where the light is hitting it from behind him. “Why did you turn yourself in?”

Hannibal pauses. “You already know the answer to that.”

“Maybe I want to hear you say it.”

He averts his gaze. “Will.”

Will is not sure if this is a warning ... or a prayer. He waits for his answer for a long moment, but there is nothing more.

“Did I make you speechless?” Will asks.

Hannibal smiles, almost sadly. “Would not be the first time.”

“ _Hannibal_.” The intent in his voice makes Hannibal meet his eyes again.

He opens his mouth. “Because … you rejected me.”

Will is suddenly overcome by how much his own heart aches by hearing it out loud. He himself said those very words to him. He said a lot of things to him. How can there still be so much left unsaid?

It is he who reaches out this time, that sharp cheekbone looking so made for his own hand. He yearns for touch, for warmth, to have Hannibal looking at him the way he is now, with a certain something in his eyes that says … And then his hand stops. Lands on Hannibal’s shoulder instead.

“We should go back,” Will whispers, lacking the air to breathe.

“We should.”

Hannibal’s voice is a deep hush, making a shiver run down Will’s spine. He sees Hannibal’s eyes dropping to his lips. Oh, he is a magnet, has always been, pulling him in just by standing too closely. By putting his other hand on his shoulder, he is letting the magnetism overcome him, the thread pulling them closer together until his lips are hovering over Hannibal’s. He could taste him. Again, Hannibal must be yearning, too.

But Will stops himself.

“You should have a ring,” he growls.

“A ring?” Hannibal’s breath tingles hotly on his lips.

“If you’re telling everyone we’re married, you should wear a ring to prove it.”

“Are you claiming me, Will?”

_God, his voice_. Every purr travels further along his vertebrae, pooling in his stomach.

“Only marking you.”

Hannibal smiles. “Good.”

He leans forward. Will takes a sharp breath as a soft pair of lips lands on his forehead. Kissing his scar. _Where Hannibal marked him_ , he realises. It’s so sensitive, so intimate, he closes his eyes without knowing it. The kiss lasts for a long time, and his hands claw into Hannibal’s shoulders so hard like he fears he might just disappear.

When he opens his eyes, Hannibal looks at him like he has never seen anything more precious.

“Shall we?” he asks.

And so they head back to the house.


End file.
